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SMSF

ATO set to visit practitioners to fix troubled SMSFs

The ATO has identified about 70 SMSF professionals in an effort to combat persistent late lodgers, as more broadly the axe currently hangs over tens of thousands of SMSFs which have not met their lodgement obligations.

The superannuation reforms require up-to-date information about a fund's balance and in particular to be visible to the regulators, and the ATO has identified about 40,000 SMSFs which are at risk of being made non-compliant - and losing 50 per cent of their assets - if they persist with non-lodgement.

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The ATO has now identified a group of about 70 advisers that it will be directly contacting to combat a particularly worrying batch of these funds.

“Shortly we'll be making contact with approximately 70 advisers who have 10 or more SMSF clients with multiple years of outstanding SMSF annual returns,” said ATO assistant commissioner Kasey Macfarlane at the SMSF Summit in Sydney last week.

“Our first response will be to work with SMSF trustees and their advisers to support them to bring their lodgements up to date, but in those small number of cases where SMSF trustees simply won't engage with us or work with us to resolve the issue of outstanding lodgements, we will be moving to issue notices asking them to show cause as to why we shouldn't make their fund non-complying," she said.

“We will be adopting a targeted and tailored approach with a view to either having SMSFs bring their lodgements up-to-date or exit the system," she added.